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SPANISH POINT

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cannon were placed after the Spanish descents upon the coast. The view looking back on Mousehole from here is fine. You see the place spread out as a map. In front is St. Clement's Isle, and next it, to the west, is "Merlyn Car," or "Merlin Rock."

A chapel once stood on St. Clement's Isle dedicated to the saint; now a small monument shows up silhouetted against the sea, put up to the late owner of the island. The formation of the island is of slaty felspar of a grand purple colour. Indeed, the geological formations of this part of Cornwall are unusually interesting. At the back of Mousehole pier is seen the juncture of the slate and granite formations, and veins of granite in the slate may be clearly seen here at low water.

It was concerning Merlin's Isle that the Cassandra of the Arthurian times uttered the fearful prediction :

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Aga syth tyer, war au meyne Merlyn

Ara neb syth Leskey Paul, Penzance, hag Newlyn."

"There shall land on the stone of Merlin

Those that shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn." Looking a little farther west as one stands on Battery Point, the eye is charmed with Spanish Point, where it is said that Spaniards landed. The trees clothe it right down to the water's edge and are green and refreshing to look upon.

Far away the Lizard is seen, right in front, a low-lying strip of land bordering the horizon in that direction. The top of St. Michael's Mount is clearly visible against the sky, above the outline of the hills, and with the rocks at our feet-fantastically named the Bible and Prayer Book-a scene of more than usual peacefulness and beauty is disclosed. The walk to Battery Point is well worth taking.

Just at hand, about twenty yards, a path conducts to a cavern about forty feet high simply lined with ferns, amongst which I noticed the sea fern (Asplenium marinum). The climb down to the shore in order to get to the entrance of this cave is not so easy, but two iron staples, or handles, firmly affixed to the surface of a bare rock at one difficult spot, aid the enterprising visitor.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ANCIENT CORNISH LANGUAGE

IF there were no other feature about Cornwall to make

it deeply interesting, the fact that until comparatively recently it had a language of its own would alone be sufficient to attract the attention of many persons. No other county of England is distinguished in this manner, in which respect it is therefore unique, and to the Land's End district belongs the merit of last retaining this ancient tongue.

The ancient Cornish language was Celtic, allied rather to the Welsh and Armoric branch, and a dialect of that which before the Saxon invasion was common to all Britain. It was more pure and nearer the original Celtic than any of the other languages. In other words, it was Cymric, not Gaelic. In origin not so early as the Irish, but probably older than the Welsh, yet sufficiently like the Welsh and Armoric for the Bretons and Welshmen to talk together; and Scawen, writing at the close of the seventeenth century, says it was the most pleasing of the Celtic tongues, being less guttural, "stored with a sufficient plenty to express the conceits of a good wit, both in prose or rhyme "; or in Carew's words, "not so unpleasant in sound with throat letters," and therefore more elegant and expressive. Carew further says: "Oaths they have not, passed two or three natural, but are fain to borrow of the English. Marry, this want is relieved with a flood of most bitter curses and spiteful nicknames."

In 1746 Captain Barrington had a seaman on board who, speaking his own Cornish language, was readily understood by some French seamen on the coast of Brittany. The names of many places in Brittany show the similarity of the Cornish and Armoric languages, such as Portdavet, Plainguain, St. Meen, St. Aubyn, Pontivy, St. Pol de Leon, Penmare, Lannion, Treguier, etc.

Max Müller says of it that "it was a melodious and yet by no means an effeminate language."

DOLLY PENTREATH

239 Scawen places it in this respect above most of the Celtic dialects. "Cornish," he says, "is not to be gutturally pronounced, as the Welsh for the most part is, nor mutteringly, as the Armorick, nor whiningly, as the Irish (which two latter qualities seem to have been contracted from their servitude); but must be lively and manly spoken, like other primitive tongues."

Though it was spoken very generally in the days of Henry VIII, English had begun to be understood; for Andrew Borde tells us that "in Cornwall is two speeches, the one is naughty Englyshe, and the other the Cornyshe."

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About 1584 Norden says that the Cornishmen have much conformed themselves to the English tongue."; but that in the western parts of the county the Cornish tongue is most in use amongst the inhabitants." The language made a brave stand for existence, it seems, in the parish of Feock, where its use was so prevalent in 1640 that the vicar, Mr. William Jackman, was under the necessity of administering the Sacrament in Cornish, as his parishioners understood no other language. In the parishes of Paul, St. Just, and Sennen-that is the Land's End district of Cornwall-it was almost universally spoken as late as 1650 by the fishermen, market-women, and tinners. The last sermon in Cornish was preached in 1678, in Landewednack Church. The guaries or miracle plays continued, however, to be acted in Cornish for some years after. In 1701, Mr. Ed. Llhuyd, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, who died in 1709, writes that every Cornishman could then speak English, and that Cornish was then heard in a few villages at Land's End. In 1768 Mr. Daines Barrington made a complete tour of Cornwall in search actually of the Cornish language, but he could find only one person, Dolly Pentreath, an old fisherwoman of Mousehole, who could speak it fluently, and two or three aged neighbours of hers who understood it.

Peter Pindar gives the story of the interview of Daines Barrington with Dolly Pentreath in this verse :—

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Hail, Mousehole! birthplace of old Doll Pentreath,
The last who jabbered Cornish--so says Daines,

Who bat-like haunted ruins, lane and heath,
With Will o' Wisp, to brighten up his brains."

This old woman, Dorothy Jeffery, better known by her maiden name of Dolly Pentreath, is popularly, though erroneously, supposed to have been the last person to speak Cornish. She was born in or about 1714, at any rate that is the year of her baptism, and she died in 1777 and was buried in Paul Church. Mr. Thompson, an engineer of Truro, who had made the Cornish language his study, wrote the following epitaph upon Dolly, which he circulated among his friends: hence the tale of a tombstone that never honoured her remains :--

"Old Dolly Pentreath, one hundred aged and two,
Deceased and buried in Paul parish too :-

Not in the church, with the people great and high,
But in the churchyard, doth old Dolly lie."

In Cornish :

"Coth Doll Pentreath cans ha deau,
Marow ha kledys ed Paul Plêu :-
Na ed an Eglos, gan pobel brâs,
Bes ed Eglos-hay, coth Dolly es."

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A monument to the memory of this old woman was placed on the outer wall of Paul Churchyard on the south side, near one of the entrance stiles. It states that Dorothy Pentreath, who conversed in Cornish, died in 1777 "; and "This stone is erected by the Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte and the Revd. John Garrett, 1860." The inscribed monumental stone is surmounted by a plain Celtic cross on the two sides and back of the top portion.

From what one can gather Dolly was a bit of a fraud, and if it had not been for the philological zeal of Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte little would be heard of her nowadays. She gabbled to strangers in an unknown tongue for sixpences and shillings; but to say that she was the last that spoke Cornish is to say that a language dies out like the snuffing of a candle, which is absurd. Languages, like nations, die out gradually in the course of time, and there is no precise moment or even exact period when a language or a nation can be said not to be. A writer in Cornish Notes and Queries says of the famous Dolly: "I was told a story about her by a very old inhabitant of Paul, who vouched for its truth, as having heard it from his father, and which shows that Dolly was an impudent beggar. It seems that

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